Some Adults Don't Get It, But Youth's Passion For Musical Icons Sends Message

April 18, 1994|By SUSAN PAYNTER Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Well, now that we've received, via radio wave, the definitive and ever-so thoughtfully considered declaration from Rush Limbaugh that singer-poet Kurt Cobain amounted to so much "human debris," the press can go back to printing good news about spelling bee winners, as he directed.

And, properly chastised as misguided idolaters, the kids who were reached by Cobain's rhymes and rent by his death can resume gazing upward at more appropriate icons.

(A list is no doubt available from Limbaugh's syndicators.) "What happens to men?" asked a mother (Beah Richards) of a father (Spencer Tracy) in the movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

The words in the scene - which could be rewritten to read "men and women" - echoed in my ears as I read the commentary and listened to the call-in shows that followed Cobain's death: "What happens to men when they grow old? Why do they forget everything? ... You might as well be blind men. You can only see that they [our children) have a problem. But do you really know what's happened to them? How they feel about each other?

"I believe that men grow old and ... they forget it all, forget what true passion is. You knew once, but that was a long time ago. And the strange thing ... is, you don't even remember. If you did, how could you do what you are doing now?'' The comfortable members of the adult world - the columnists, commentators, and callers to radio talk shows - busily afflicted comfort on each other by declaring kids' grief misspent and mindless.

Parents, justifiably scared by his suicide, sought to discount Cobain and his impact on their kids.

"We shouldn't elevate someone like this as a role model for our children," said one of many mothers on the radio. "Not someone who abused drugs and was maybe even bisexual!'' "We" aren't, Mom. "They" are.

Cobain's music may not be within the grasp of most grown-ups. But the reasons their kids respond to it with such passion is at least worth reaching out for. What good lies in closing another door on understanding by denying, discounting or even cynically deriding their loss?

Historically, the good personal habits of writers, poets, philosophers or actors have had little to do with the reasons the young have responded to their often anguished words.

And haven't teens of almost every era embraced music idols designed to drive parents toward temporary insanity and the radio button? Hasn't rebelling always been part of the point?

Did your dad dig Jimi Hendrix? Elvis? Janis Joplin?

When they died - of causes that seemed equally inappropriate - didn't a hot, angry singe of dismissal burn you when bigger, more powerful people deemed them unworthy of tears?

Of course kids react - or over-react - with bursts of high-octane, hormonal angst. Everything seems so dramatic, so devastating. Don't you remember the boyfriend you knew you couldn't live without?

"Well, it was a good career move for the record company," Limbaugh said this week, cynically discounting Cobain's death.

And, naturally, I hope my 4-year-old son will reach higher and wider as he grows taller. That he'll connect with creative people whose effect is more positive and lasting. That he won't forge links of despair and alienation with fragile singers and meteoric athletes.

But if he does and if they fall, I hope he'll tell me how he feels. And that I'll listen.